Home Care Opportunities Accelerate as Most Hospitals Face Readmission Penalties

Attention, home care leaders! Your current and potential hospital partners have more reasons to seek help with their goal of preventing inpatient readmissions. Maybe it's time to approach them and revisit this goal with a more specific game plan that addresses key diagnoses in your market? According to a report in Modern Healthcare last month, most of our nation's hospitals will get even less money from Medicare in fiscal 2016 because too many patients return within 30 days of discharge.

Based on the newly posted CMS data, a full 77% of the 3,400 hospitals subject to the CMS 30-day Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program performed poorly and face some penalty, and more than 1% will be subject to the maximum 3% reduction in 2016.

Julia H. Maroney, RN, MHSA, Director, Simione Healthcare Consultants, concurs that it's time for home care organizations to seize the day. "Home care agencies should consider stronger efforts and build new relationships to identify the kinds of patients they are getting from hospitals, while developing a clearer picture on their own readmission rates in the disease categories that are subject to this increasing scrutiny," Maroney says. "Additional work with hospitals can help better identify the typical 20% of hospitalized patients who are eligible for home health services, as well as establish shared goals for quality of care throughout the course of each patient's experience."

We look forward to seeing our many clients and colleagues at the NAHC Annual Meeting and Exposition, October 28-30, in Nashville. Be sure to book your travel to stay for the Closing Party sponsored by Simione Healthcare Consultants from 7-10 PM on Friday, October 30th! Join us for NAHC's grand finale celebration at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center!

Simione Healthcare Consultants will round out another year of legendary sales leadership with training dates in September and November. Improve your agency's knowledge of the sales process and get set for an exciting new year of growth and opportunity in referral management!

Training is $1,495 per person. The schedule is Monday 1 -5:30 pm, Tuesday, 8:30 am-5:30 pm, and Wednesday, 8:30 am-2 pm -- no need to travel on a Sunday! Square One Boot Camp includes separate, specialized tracks for home care and hospice. Sales Management Workshop is for agency leaders and managers who supervise sales teams.

Founded in 1966, Simione™ Healthcare Consultants provides comprehensive business solutions for home health and hospice in the areas of finance, operations, cost reporting, compliance and risk, sales and marketing, information technology, and mergers and acquisitions. Simione's experts and tools support performance improvement across the healthcare continuum, engaging hospitals, health networks and agencies to improve quality, reduce costs, and minimize risk for more effective delivery of patient care.